A Cold Place In Hell

by William Blinn

  Then he said: “Wilbur.” Soft. “Wilbur?”

  I didn’t move. Tried to be fake asleep.

  “I walked all the way down to Rooney’s tonight.” He waited for me to say something, but I was afraid to, afraid I’d say something that would tell him I was watching him and Pearline. “Seems to me it’s time to talk with Mr. Starett, see what he’s got in mind.”

  I stayed quiet. Somewhere way in the distance, I could make out Nicholas playing his sweet potato, a little piping birdsong.

  “Night, Wilbur.”

  I still acted asleep, and pretty soon I actually was, so for all I know, little Nicholas played that sweet potato all the way to the dawn.

  I never had kids, which is probably a good thing for those kids I didn’t have, but walking with Billy that next afternoon on our way over to talk with Mr. Starett, I started to get a whiff of what it must be like. It was easier for Billy to walk in the street than on the boardwalk; too many steps on the boardwalk and they were hard on getting up and down, but walking in the street made him and me look like a two-man parade. And as we went, there were people coming out of the stores, calling out.

  “Hey, Billy! Look at you!”

  “Who’s that walkin’ there? That Billy Piper? Who’da thought that?”

  “Billy Piper! Land’s sake! Good on you, Billy!”

  Omar came out front of Rooney’s, lifting a schooner of beer in our direction. Willard Ganeel stood in the doorway of the General Store, making that little “o” thing with his thumb and index finger. Well intentioned, but looked silly. And there was girls in the windows at Honey’s, lacy camisole things, all smiling, some blowing kisses. Pearline was there, and her smile was smaller, but not less happy. And Billy waved and smiled back. Touched the brim of his hat. Even seemed to walk a little more spry. And I just sniffed that whiff of what it must be like to be a parent. Felt like a good thing. Little scary, a lot good.

  Rooney’s was the only place I ever saw had shinier floors than what was in the entry hall of Mr. Starett’s house. I’d never been inside his place before and when I glanced over at Billy, his bug-eyed look while he was looking around told me I wasn’t the only first-timer standing there. There was a big painting on the wall by the stairs, picture of a handsome woman in her forties or so, green velvet dress, hair all circled up at the back of her head. Her eyes were wide, dark, ready to bolt out of the frame if you looked at her too hard. That’d be Mrs. Starett, who wasn’t here anymore. Not that she was dead, she wasn’t, but the winters and the bone chill took those dark eyes to a place without a downspout. She was somewhere back East now and Mr. Starett never talked about her, but he always thanked you when you asked after her. She might not have been in the house anymore, but she was still in a place close by as far as Mr. Starett was concerned.

  He took me and Billy into the back office, and I admit I was trembling inside. It’s one thing for Billy to be brave and generous when he’s got Pearline’s perfume all around, but I wasn’t totally certain what he might say if Mr. Starett was to offer him a job working with Cookie, putting my bony butt back onto a saddle and riding dusty dirty drag for the rest of my days. Fact is, it’s a pretty quick idea to get to and one that stands pretty tall and strong. I could have saved myself the lick-lipping nerves. Mr. Starett covered my bet.

  There was a map spread out on his big desk, each corner held down by a shotgun shell. He rapped a knuckle on a circle he’d made on the map. “Here’s where you’re going, Billy.”

  We both leaned forward and looked down to the circled part. Then we looked at each other. He didn’t know; I didn’t know.

  “Mr. Starett, I don’t know what I’m looking at, sir.”

  “You’re looking at the timberline shack on Jupiter View. You’re looking at the place we lost about forty head last year. You’re looking at the cabin at timberline on Jupiter View where you’re going to spend all of next winter.”

  Billy said, “I see,” but that was a lie, and Billy’s look shouted that, so Mr. Starett went on.

  “I’ve got Heflin and Benboy up there now, putting up firewood and filling in the chinks. Once they’re done with that, they’ll put the corral back where it ought to be. Once they’re done, the place will be a castle. Well, no, no, not that. But it’ll stand up for the winter, and that’s what you’ll need.”

  Billy’s voice was reed thin. “Mr. Starett, I’m not about to take any charity. That’s not my way.”

  “Me neither. This isn’t charity, Billy. You think I’d be sending Heflin and Benboy up to do all that work on the maybe you’d go along with this? Uh-uh. Somebody’s going to be up there this winter, Billy. Somebody’s going to make sure I don’t lose me another thirty, forty head. I’d like it to be you. I think it’s a job you can do for me. No cut riding, no hopping around. But if you don’t want to do it, then so be it. But there’s going to be somebody up there this winter, Billy. Somebody’s going to be getting those wages, whether you give the say-so about yourself or not.”

  “And if I say no?”

  Mr. Starett found a dead cigar in the dish next to the map and took it up, finding a match, firing it up with a thumbnail. It glowed as he puffed. Balloon of smoke from the other side of the desk. “Well, that’s when we might start talking about that charity you’re not so fond of.”

  Billy’s head went down. He leaned on the desk.

  Starett went on after a time for a time. Wouldn’t send Billy on up till October, which would give him a couple months to work on the leg. How they’d teamster him up with weaponry and shells, food in cans and hardtack sacks, everything that they could think of to get him through the time up there. It was a plan and like it or not, there’s always something to be said for a man who’s got a plan.

  “Gimme a day?” said Billy.

  “Sure thing,” Starett said. Then: “One way or another, Billy, I’m sending someone up there to winter it through and hold down the number of beeves I’m losing. Don’t see why it shouldn’t ought to be you.”

  We were done, but Billy didn’t know how to get out of there, so I jumped on, thanking Mr. Starett, grabbing on to Billy’s elbow, and tugged Billy back toward the door and out onto the shiny floor at the front door part.

  Out on the porch, Billy took a count to settle his hat right, get the crutch lined up under his arm. I offered him an arm when we started down the steps, but he didn’t want that, which was no surprise.

  “Ask you a question?” I said.

  “You just did.”

  “Can you explain to me one good reason why you’d tell the man no? He’s offering help, is all he’s doing.”

  “I’d be away from Pearline four, five months, Wilbur.”

  We were at the street now. Turned back in the direction of Blackthorne’s place. “Billy, you was too young for the war, but you know about what they call the conscription, don’t you?”

  “I do.”

  “And what would you call somebody who was so bothered because he’d be away from his sweetie for a long time and decided not to soldier with the others on account of that? What would you call him?”

  “Wilbur, there was a war going on then. Different. Different all the way up, all the way down.”

  “Look at the dice, Billy. Count the dots. They count up plain as pus. You are in a war. You’re in as much of a war as you’re ever likely to be in, and if you’ve got a name to call on those boys who wiggled past conscription that you don’t think you ought to call on yourself, why, I’ll just shut up and listen because that’s an explanation I don’t want to miss.”

  We was all the way down to Rooney’s before Billy spoke up. “How long’d that war last, Wilbur? How long were those boys off in the war?”

  “A year. Sometimes longer.”

  “And when it was all done, the girls was still there waiting on them? None of them went off?”

  “None’s a hard word, Billy. Most stayed. Some might have gone through a hole in the fence. But I think you got to realize, Billy, it isn�
�t like Pearline’s goin’ to a lot of church socials and selling box lunches for the cause.”

  I would have thought an eagle was trying to claim me; that’s how hard Billy’s hand clamped down on my shoulder. He turned me to look at him square on. “Wilbur, you’re too old and bloody brittle and I’m too wobbly still, but if those things weren’t the truth, I’d take that last remark as my permission to knock your head off to one side.”

  “I’m sorry I said it, Billy. True or not, it shouldn’t have been said. You and me don’t need to be hammering at each other.”

  He appeared to take that as a good answer. We walked on again. Heel boot. Foot drag. Over and over. Then, when we come around the corner to where we could see Blackthorne’s barn, Billy said: “I’ll tell Mr. Starett tomorrow.”

  “You taking him up on it?”

  “I got a choice?”

  “Not that I see.”

  “Me neither.” I stopped us walking to the barn. “I got enough jingle to buy,” I said.

  “I got enough thirsty to drink.”

  We turned tail and went to Rooney’s then.

  That next day, we moved back into the Starett bunkhouse and things got put back more or less the way things were before Black Iodine frog-flipped on Billy. I went with Cookie each day out to Weemer’s Pasture where Mr. Starett had a crew looking to see if the creek could be dammed up and turned into a watering pond.

  Billy spent most of the afternoons in the tack room, mending and stitching as best he could, doing what he could to earn his keep. He’d be there for supper at nighttime, but when the arguments started or boys just went off moon-crazed, Billy just set out walking, crutch and all. He didn’t like folks watching him struggle with the action, and he thought if he was out there after the sun left, he wouldn’t be laughed at, wouldn’t be felt sorry for. Saturdays, he’d ride into town, his own leg out stiff, looking like a K plopped down on horseback, and he’d be at Honey’s, trying to gouge out a bit of time with Pearline, though that was hard on Saturday nights. That was hard on them both.

  Then, something mysterious happened that no one involved could explain, even though it had happened to each and every one each and every year they’d been on the face of this earth.

  Summer left the room and there was October standing in the door.

  It was time to load Billy Piper up to the top of Jupiter View. Mr. Starett said it was Miz Starett who made up the list of what was to go in up the way with Billy. Mr. Starett had them put up the high sides on the supply rig, and when I saw what all Willard Ganeel had piled up on the General Store loading dock, I figured we better hitch up a couple buffalo to hump that wagon on up to the line shack. Didn’t know what all Miz Starett thought Billy was going to need to get through the winter, but whatever the hell it was, she was making sure he was going to have it. Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it; that must have been her way of thinking. Poor horses.

  The plan was to take Billy up to Jupiter View that next Monday, and it took a couple granite-hard hints to Mr. Starett that a wage advance to Billy on the Sunday before might allow him a night’s farewell with Pearline, who he wasn’t going to see or talk to or touch for the next four months. Starett wasn’t easy on the issue.

  “If it was anything but to be used for him going over to Honey’s, it might be a different matter, Wilbur, but my wife’s a stern believer, and she definitely doesn’t hold with paying for my boys to go over to Honey’s and spend out.”

  “Mrs. Starett, she’s Temperance, too, isn’t she?” I said.

  “She is.”

  I’d seen decanter bottles in Starett’s house filled with honey-colored bourbon sniffing liquid, which made me comfortable with thinking the Temperance Pledge in that house had a lot to do with whether or not Mrs. Starett was on the property or not. “She know that some of the wages you pay are spent over on Rooney’s bar?”

  “I’m sure she might assume that’s the case.”

  And I didn’t say a mumbling word. Just stared at the man. Worms on the end of a hook been more at ease.

  “’Course, it might be a rumor,” he said.

  “What’s that, sir?”

  “Man could go into Rooney’s and have himself a cup of coffee, too. There’s no rule about who orders what.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “For all I know a man could go on into Honey’s and just play pool.”

  “Or pay little Nicholas to play some favorite tunes on his little ocarina.”

  “That, too. Could pay little Nicholas for favorite tunes. I imagine a young man like Billy Piper might have a lot of favorite tunes.”

  “More than anyone could count, Mr. Starett.”

  Starett went to his desk and pulled out a black metal strongbox with a numbers lock. I turned away and looked out the bay window. Heard the sound of crinkly paper. Starett cleared his throat. I turned around. He shoved an envelope across the desk in my direction. “You tell Billy this is a going-away congratulations.”

  The envelope wasn’t bulging, but there was enough congratulations in there to promise a pleasant Sunday night for Billy and Pearline.

  The only thing we didn’t take into consideration was Billy and Pearline. We put together a special hoopla for them both, but what got clear quick was that they didn’t want to have us there, didn’t want to hear the toasts and the hollering. They both smiled, but they was the kind of smiles that never showed teeth, the smile a ten-year-old saves for fat aunts on a hot day.

  Once the message settled in on us, we looked over to the bar and the tables with poker chips, and that gave Billy and Pearline the chance to venture up the stairs and into her room. Honey even bought for everybody around then, which served to take attention off whatever was taking place in Pearline’s room, whether it was reading posy poems to each other or Billy playing serious bed bounce like he was a stag in serious wide nostril rut. None of our business either way.

  There was ground fog and breath frost all the while I gave Heflin a hand putting the team of dray horses into the harness. We was almost ready to go by the time Billy walked Whiskey, his old mare, on up to us. Didn’t look as if he’d seen any sleep the night before, but it might have been he saw a whole lot of bed. His eyes got wide as doorknobs when he saw all the boxes and barrels in the back of the high-sider. He didn’t know he’d need this much.

  I mounted Geezer, and me and Billy fell in behind Heflin and the wagon. The sun was just nudging the night off to one side when we creaked down Main and pointed toward the foothills. The top of Jupiter View was all wrapped up in gray ribbons of clouds, like a woman in a storm. We were both hunched down, and the only noise was the wagon wheels and Heflin mumbling “sonofabitch” each time the wagon bounced on one of the ruts studding the road. Heflin’s back was always a damn bastard, and this trip was not likely to make it a boil you’d want to kiss.

  Time came it was light and even a little cooler the higher up the trail we got. It was narrow enough for me and Billy on Whiskey and Geezer. For Heflin and the wagon, it got to be a circus tightrope boiled in butter. Pretty soon, Heflin held up a hand, said he needed to stop and wring out his wrangle, though I think he was just bled dry by the road and all its switchbacking. Billy and me swung off the horses and just stood there puffing a bit. We could hear Heflin watering the aspen. Billy turned and looked back from the way we’d come up. Salt Springs was a clump of something hard to make out at the base of the mountain.

  “It might be some kind of conjure,” Billy said.

  “What might be?”

  “The farther off you get from things, the smaller they look. They don’t seriously get any smaller, they just look like they do. Not sure why that happens. Not sure why. What do you think, Wilbur?”

  “Best you say that again. Not so quick.”

  He pointed down the trail. “All those buildings look real small. But they’re not real small. All those buildings are just the same size as when we rode out of town. How come you think that’s the way of
it?”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Heflin come waddle out of the road brush, buttoning up his front side. “Time to draw rein,” I said to Billy. “Let’s get to it.” Billy didn’t fuss about it, started moving right to Whiskey, but he backed to the horse, looking down the side of the mountain to Salt Springs every step of the way.

  Heflin and his crew had done a good job at the line shack. They’d filled in the chinks with mud and leaf-mulch. There was enough firewood stacked high to melt most of the moon, and the little corral off to the back was built sturdy and high. The trees stood tall around the shack, but you didn’t have to tilt your look much to see that part of the mountain that was rock and ruin. Inside, the place was buttoned down good. To most, it wasn’t a big place, but to Billy, coming out of the bunkhouse he shared with twenty hawking, spitting, stinking, two-legged-hog humans, it musta looked like a palace.

  We got Billy to walk around outside and look things over, being as his leg made him helping pretty much an echo in the mud. So, me and Heflin unloaded the wagon. Then, he unpacked some of the boxes on one side, while I opened up some of the barrels on the other. We were up high, so there was more huffing than talking, though at one time he said: “That boy realize that trail’s closed off after serious snow sets down?”

  “He realizes.”

  “He realize no one’s going to be able to get up here to check on him?”

  “He realizes.”

  “No help coming if he takes a tumble and hurts himself?”

  “Heflin, I talked with Billy Piper. From what he told me, he doesn’t plan on falling.” Nothing coming back from the other side of the shack, and I looked out to the corral. Billy was standing there at the gate, lifting the latch over and over, just using one hand, like he might have to do if he had a lead on a stray beaver and couldn’t grab on with two. Just for a flicker, it crossed my thinking that Billy looked smaller to me because he was standing farther off than usual, but that kind of thinking can muddy up your milk if you’re not careful.